New mobile training unit adds enhanced level of learning Pierce Manufacturing Inc., an Oshkosh Corporation company, has announced its 2014 regional training schedule for Pierce dealers and customers. The company is offering a wide range of apparatus maintenance and troubleshooting classes – featuring a new mobile training unit – at three locations: Appleton, Wisconsin; Palmetto, Florida; and Las Vegas, Nevada. Custom training classes are also available, by special request, at individual fire departments across the country. The Pierce regional training program – now in its 10th year – is featuring, for the first time in 2014, a specially engineered training unit with built-in training tools, allowing students more opportunities for hands-on learning. “The hands-on aspect is always a winner, as our customers’ technicians like to learn with their hands,” said Dan Bailey, Pierce Manufacturing product training manager. “With the new mobile classroom training unit, which includes a Command Zone™ simulator, a PUC™ pump and TAK-4® suspension, they’ll be able to troubleshoot, dismantle, and work on electrical, suspension, and pump components right on the truck.” Offered classes feature a wide range of topics, including Chassis Electrical, TAK-4 Maintenance, Command Zone II, Side Roll Protection Repair, Aerial Maintenance, Husky™ Foam System and Hercules™ CAFS Maintenance, Air Brake and ABS Troubleshooting, PUC™ Repair and Maintenance, Air Conditioning Maintenance, and a new Advance Aerial Class. “By taking maintenance classes to regional locations across the country, we make it easier for Pierce dealers – and Pierce customers – to gain valuable Pierce apparatus training,” added Bailey. “About 600 people attend these training classes each year, and we’ve certified more than 110 dealer technicians in our Pierce Master Training Program. Customers can be assured that Pierce dealer technicians are highly trained to work on Pierce and other apparatus.” Pierce customers can check updated schedules and register for classes online.

Label: Forest fires Title: Study into forest fires Teaser: By the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Label: Drones Label: Training Label: Rosenhan’s round-up Title: Fire departments have to do more than put out fires Teaser: Ola Johansson speaks to International Fire Buyer Teaser: Everything from political to financial issues

The administration of a Fire Department is fraught with many headaches, whether they are financial, technical issues, personnel, politics, public relations, or other local issues; the Chief administrator faces a whole host of responsibilities every day. In reality, Fire Department operations these days aren’t simple. It would be really nice if all we had to do was run out and squirt water on a fire now and then. But today’s Departments are involved in not only the basic fire operations but also EMS, inspections, public education, and local issues. As previously noted, the intrusion of various politicians and judges is becoming a significant influence on Fire Department Management and Operations. The technical issues are pretty much a mature technology these days, even with the latest developments of such innovations as CAFS, various foam systems, HazMat, larger and larger pumps and engines, and the increasing complexity of the electronics on the apparatus. Further, there is a long list of regulatory, advisory, and legal agencies and standards that either directly affect a Fire Department or come under their jurisdiction. The list of mnemonics and acronyms is long, with UL (Underwriter’s Laboratory), CSA (Canadian Standards Association), BSA (British Standards Association), FM (Factory Mutual), OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration, SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers), Federal and State EPAs (Environmental Protection Administration) and DEQs (Department of Environmental Quality), ANSI (American National Standards Institute), various and sundry Building Codes such as BOCA (Building Officials Congress of America), SBC (Southern Building Code and numerous local and State Codes), and the mother of all fire codes the NFPA (National Fire Protection Association). And, obviously, in various parts of the world there are numerous other Standards-making organisations, laws, regulations, and standards. Those in the EU (European Union) alone account for reams and reams of paperwork. And interspersed with all these are anti-discrimination laws dealing with age, gender, sexual orientation, race, handicaps (ADA – Americans for Disability Act), religion, and other real or alleged policies or actions that discriminate. While the Chief Officer and even staff members cannot be expected to keep up with all these regulations and standards, they are ultimately responsible for adherence to them. And, anytime a problem arises, one can be certain to face a phalanx of lawyers and bureaucrats intent on placing blame and wanting money. While all these standards are not necessarily the ‘law’, they are usually the de facto law regardless of an authority with jurisdiction having adopted them. And certainly any item that is from a governing body is ‘the law’: These various publications and policies may be considered ‘consensus’ standards whether referenced or not and fall under a General Duty Clause of working conditions. In fact, many times over the years, lawyers and judges have had more influence on the Fire Service than is readily appreciated. Whether for simple cases of negligence or for operational problems, the magnitude and costs of litigation are quite formidable. In the US it seems that anybody can sue anybody for anything, with the defendant facing significant expenditures for defense even though the lawsuit may be frivolous or without merit. In the US plaintiff’s lawyers generally work on a contingency basis; they indeed have a vested interest in an outcome. In the UK and other countries, the plaintiff is on the hook for various expenses and the legal team is not working on a contingency basis, which somewhat limits lawsuits. In addition to the various day-to-day contacts with governing bodies (politicians) there is an increasingly involved judiciary that is affecting the entire scope of Fire Department operations. Over the years there have been numerous involvements of judges, mostly Federal Judges in the USA that have simply dictated personnel policies and even operational procedures and administrative policies. Many of these have overpowered local government decisions and resources. The most common involvement of the judiciary has been in the area of personnel. While the larger American cities, such as New York, Chicago, Birmingham, and Los Angeles have been involved in such matters for many years there are several issues that are really in the news these days. The mother of all personnel issues is presently centred in New York City, where the FDNY (Fire Department of New York) is under several judicial orders relating to personnel and equipment. A New York Judge ordered FDNY Apparatus older than ten years to be removed from service. While there is such a Union contract clause relating to first line apparatus, the judge extended it to ALL vehicles, even those that are considered non-emergency response units. The FDNY is compiling figures to determine the cost of this order and how to abide by it. And a Judge awarded lawyers representing the Vulcan Society of Black Fire-fighters who fought the City of New York for an FDNY Discrimination case to be awarded $3 million, although this was well below the $7.7 million that was requested. The argument was that the City of New York, via the FDNY, intentionally discriminated against Blacks and Hispanics. In addition the judge appointed an independent monitor to oversee sweeping changes in the FDNY’s recruitment and hiring practices. This monitor is to be paid more than $2 million and is expected to be on the job for about ten years. But then an Appellant Court overturned the original decision and order but will keep the Court ordered monitor and an oversight regime. The City still faces a large financial hit that some estimate to be over $128 million – compensating minority fire-fighter applicants who took the test and were never offered a job. The latest recruit class is composed of many people who did not pass basic entrance exams in previous years a federal judge ordered the FDNY to alter basic entrance requirements to allow persons who were ‘unfairly denied’ a job by low test scores or lack of physical fitness to be recruited. Recently, a judge ordered the FDNY to recruit a definite ratio of Hispanic, African-American and Caucasian candidates. Furthermore, he was rather critical of

 The ‘fire-fighting trap’ is a term often used by business managers to describe a shortsighted cycle of problem-solving: Dealing with ‘fires’, or problems, as they arise, but failing to address the underlying cause, thereby increasing the chance that the same problem will crop up in the future. Researchers at MIT’s Engineering Systems Division have now looked at the original inspiration for this ‘quick-fix’ management strategy: Fire-fighting itself. They combined regional fire data, such as the number of fires and the amount of land burned per year, with interviews conducted with fire managers, policymakers, and academics to draw up a model illustrating the relationships that contribute to forest-fire management. Much like in business, they found fire management can fall into the fire-fighting trap: Energy and resources are spent mostly on fire suppression — putting out fires in the moment — while less attention is devoted to fire prevention, such as clearing brush and building fire lanes during the off-season. In particular, the team identified a factor that exacerbates the fire-fighting trap: Instinctive, automatic reactions to particularly damaging fire seasons. They found that after severe fires, policymakers — driven by public pressure — funnel more funds into fire suppression for the next season. While this may put people temporarily at ease, this attention to fire suppression may undermine prevention efforts. The result, counter-intuitively, is even worse fires the following season, due to the buildup of fire-prone materials such as dried tinder and dead trees. “We’ve done the analysis and found that this political effect is a regular thing, and you have to figure out how to break the cycle,” says Richard de Neufville, a Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Engineering Systems at MIT. Portugal’s fires as a case study The model is based on fire-management practices in Portugal, and is part of a project sponsored by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Portugal Programme. The country has historically had a severe fire problem — as well as a large stake in managing fires, since a significant fraction of the country’s exports come from the timber industry. Between 1980 and 2010, the number of fires in the country increased from 4,000 to 35,000 per year. During this period, the amount of land burned rose, on average, from 180,000 acres to 375,000 acres per year nationwide. De Neufville points out that the impact of forest fires in Portugal is quite serious, considering that most fires occur close to populated regions. “You have to think about it as fires that occur, for example, in the middle of the Berkeley Hills, versus the middle of Wyoming,” de Neufville says. “There’s a lot of housing around where fires occur, so politically it’s very salient.” Breaking the system Through annual forest-fire data and interviews with fire-management officials in Portugal, Collins drew up a model comprising a physical component, outlining major factors involved in a forest’s natural process of growth, decay, burning, and renewal; and a political component, illustrating factors that contribute to fire-management policy, such as suppression and prevention budgets and yearly fire expenditures. The team ran simulations of fire-management strategy over 150 years, using data from 1900, and making projections through the year 2050. They found that initially, a policy of fire suppression seemed preferable to one of fire prevention — that is, devoting more resources to putting out fires led to less area burned overall. But after 50 years or so, a fire-suppression policy appears to result in more burned land and more fires per year than a prevention policy — which, according to Collins, “kind of hums along at a stable level of area burned.” The team’s results highlight the dangers of investing too heavily in fire-suppression measures, such as stocking up on fire-fighting resources right after a major fire. Without adequate prevention measures, forest debris can build up, fuelling a bigger, more devastating fire the next time around. Collins says the existing model is specific to Portugal, as most of the relationships incorporated in the model are based on information from that country. However, he adds that the model’s basic structure may be applied to fire management in other regions, such as southern Europe and the United States — fire-prone areas that have tended to rely on fire suppression. “This knee-jerk reaction — whether in forest fires, product development, or plant maintenance — exists in many contexts,” Collins says. “To what extent it’s undermining long-term performance is going to vary. To get an idea of how it’s having an impact on the United States would require further research.” Mark Beighley, former director of the Office of Wildland Fire Coordination for the U.S. Department of the Interior, says a similar fire-fighting trap exists in the United States. “We’re seeing bigger fires, and longer fire seasons, and more houses and communities threatened than ever before because they’re out there in the path of the fires,” Beighley says. “The need is so great to protect communities that there’s very little left for prevention. And that’s a cycle that will take some pain to break.” The team’s model, he says, may help U.S. policymakers grasp the “reinforcing loop” of politics, budgets, and fire management. “If we looked at this together, we can start to talk about making some trade-offs,” Beighley says. For now, the team is presenting its results to government officials in Portugal, as well as contacting newspapers there in an effort to raise awareness for a more balanced approach to fire management. An advantage of the model, Collins says, is that it is relatively straightforward, consisting of “general insights that are easily digestible by policy communities.” But changing a deeply entrenched system, he acknowledges, will not be an easy task. “A lot of people have an understanding of the merits of fire prevention,” Collins says. “But they’re operating within this connected, physical/political system. Our model is a 10,000-foot view, looking at how things are operating. But it’s tough for any one agent or manager to break what’s going on in this system.”

Ola Johansson, CEO of the SRTC, speaks to International Fire Buyer about the Cold War history of the Centre, and their plans to expand globally Could you please give us a brief history of your training centre? How has it developed over time? We began in 1983 as a defence training ground, originally operating as a Governmental training facility until 1986. Hasslum, currently the training grounds of SRTC, has been a military and civil training area since the middle of the 1950s. In 1986, the operations moved to a new agency called The Swedish Rescue Service Agency (SRSA). It had four training centres nationwide: Revinge, Skövde, Rosersberg and Sandö. Since then it has been operated at the Governmental training school for Swedish and International training within the area of risk and safety. Development of the Hasslum training centre in Skövde and the training courses aimed at rescue personnel, fire-fighters, Fire Chiefs and international organisations among others, continued until 2008. In early 2001 we saw a huge transformation regarding the structure of training facilities in Sweden. The Government began a large investigation concerning the numbers of training organisations in place for such Government training. The number of training facilities and also the future of the bases was based on the Cold War structure during that time, in the 80s and 90s. That is why we originally had a four school structure. The investigation about the number of schools lasted a year. In 2007, the Government decided on a new investigation about the structure of the schools. It was decided that two training schools would be owned by the Government and the remaining two would be either closed or run as private companies. In 2008, the school here was leaving Governmental ownership, as was the school in Stockholm. At the same time, there was also a reorganisation at the Swedish risk and creative management level. They created a new agency called the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency or MSB. The Swedish Rescue Service Agency, the Swedish Board of Physiological Defence and the Swedish Emergency Management Agency were all discontinued in 2008 and so were the training centres in Skövde and Rosersberg. The operations in Skövde, Hasslum, then became privately-owned and the development of rescue and safety training on the Hasslum training ground continued under the new name of Swedish Rescue Training Centre. What services do you offer? What range of fire, rescue and HAZMAT courses do you offer? We offer pretty much everything within risk and safety. We have continued providing the same courses we did as a Government school, only now we do so as a private company. We have been certified by the Swedish Government to continue the training we did before within the fire, rescue and HAZMAT control training curriculum. What we can also now include, as a private company, is our experience in consulting and operational knowledge gained from having one of the largest training facilities in the world for over 25 years. We help our customers to implement training facilities in their home countries, advising them on the structures of schools and the training needed for staff, technicians and trainers and company guidance systems. The other thing we offer is training systems. We offer complete system packages for our customers. We started to build the container system that is widely recognised today in the late 80s. If someone wants to buy a fire training container system we can deliver it to them, together with the training and also the maintenance concept – the market package as well. What does your Situation Awareness Training involve? Why do you think SAT training is so important? The main focus we have here at the facility is live agent training or real training. This means that if we are carrying out HAZMAT training for example, we don’t only use cold smoke or steam generators, we train with real HAZMAT. I believe we are the only facility in the world able to carry out such training, on such a large scale, as a private company. Similarly, if we conduct ammonia training we will do it with real toxic ammonia in a realistic environment. It’s the same case with our fire training; if we conduct indoor fire training then we will do it with real fire. As a fire-fighter you have to be able to distinguish between fire types by looking at the colour of smoke, to determine fire behaviour sequences and so on. This knowledge is all developed through fighting real fires. Can you tell us about your simulators and the equipment you use during training? Many other companies around the world have copied our containers from the early 90s. The difference between their containers and ours is that they use computer guidance and electronic guidance and so on. In our containers it’s the opposite way round, because our containers will work in the middle of the desert and in the middle of the jungle, or at the North Pole – anywhere in the world. Our safety is built in at the construction stage – that’s the big difference. What makes your training grounds so unique? What facilities do you offer at the grounds? We started to build the grounds in the early 80s and by today, anything you would find outside of a training ground is found here too – we have shops, hotels, hospitals, bars. Anything that students would possibly need, we aim to cater to. How do your courses attract international customers? We have a lot of fixed courses. We have 45 fixed courses in our catalogue. That’s the main thing we’re doing. 25-30% of what we do here is courses from the catalogue. We customise all the courses to meet the customers’ demands or the problems that the customer is having. It could be Fire Brigades or Police Departments; we have military customers, we have corporate customers. We sit them down and identify what kind of problems they’re having and what kind of training they’re looking for. The

 Fire imaging. Hurricane relief. Flood monitoring. Earthquake assistance. Search and rescue. The Predator® B Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPA) conducts these and many other challenging missions in the American National Airspace System (NAS) routinely. Predator B’s capabilities continue to yield paradigm-changing, life-saving results and have re-shaped the aviation landscape. The U.S. Government’s interest in Predator B continues to soar primarily due to the military’s successful employment of these aircraft in austere environments like Afghanistan. Moreover, because Predator B is remotely-operated and there’s no man in the cockpit, the aircraft has become the nation’s go-to aviation asset, allowing federal agencies such as NASA and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Customs and Border Protection (CBP), to facilitate dangerous missions but without risk to pilots’ lives. Predator B: Behind the controls Predator B is built upon General Atomics’ battle-proven Predator/Gray Eagle® aircraft family, which has amassed over two-and-half million flight hours. An evolutionary leap in RPA performance and reliability, Predator B features triple-redundant flight control systems and is engineered to operate in the NAS. The aircraft has tremendous endurance, can remain airborne for 20 to 30 hours, and is equipped with 4,000 pounds of fuel and an extremely efficient 66-foot long wingspan. This offers a significant advantage over manned aircraft that typically fly much shorter missions to 50,000 feet. Predator B flies as fast as 240 knots and has a 3,850-pound payload capacity that includes 3,000 pounds of external stores. Predator B is currently operational with and is a highly valued asset for NASA and CBP, as well as the U.S. Air Force, U.S. Navy, the Royal Air Force, and the Italian Air Force. To control a mission, Predator B’s crew, consisting of a pilot and sensor operator, sit side-by-side in a Ground Control Station (GCS). The pilot flies the RPA and the sensor operator tracks and identifies targets with the sensors. Satellite communications enables operators to uplink control commands to the aircraft and download payload products and imagery. Fire imaging First responders need as much situational awareness as possible to fight fires spread across treacherous forest terrain better. Equipped with airborne sensors that provide a wide field-of-view spanning several miles, NASA’s Predator B (‘Ikhana’) was invaluable in 2007 and 2008 for penetrating smoke and allowing fire-fighters to see far and wide across dense wilderness and treacherous terrain. Ikhana was used extensively to aid local fire-fighters against a slew of fires that represented the single largest fire in California’s history, claiming 10 lives, destroying more than 1,700 homes, burning over 200,000 acres, and forcing the evacuation of 500,000 residents. Without Ikhana’s support, however, it’s possible that these losses could have been greater. During its two-year mission, Ikhana flew approximately 22,000 feet over more than 60 fires throughout eight western states. The aircraft leveraged its NASA-designed infrared imaging sensor to pierce through the smoke and detect hot spots of the fires. The infrared images were then processed and relayed via satellite communications to NASA where engineers overlaid the imagery on Google Maps and relayed it to fire-fighters in the field. This precise, real-time information allowed first responders and fire commanders to anticipate the speed and direction of the fire and allocate fire-fighting resources better. Having this real-time data sometimes meant the difference between life and death. During the July 2008 fire near Paradise, California, fire commanders didn’t detect an oncoming fire because its hotspot was concealed by smoke. However, Ikhana’s infrared imagery revealed the inbound wildfire, which provided fire-fighters with ample time to evacuate 10,000 residents safely, form defenses, and save the town. Prior to Ikhana, fire-fighting missions involved mounting fire sensors on manned aircraft; however, the hazards with that are great. Fire missions create numerous dangers for pilots, including obscured visibility, night operations, and turbulence as a result of hot air rising. Leveraging aircraft like Ikhana offsets these risks while delivering persistent surveillance and real-time data for fire-fighters. Additionally, on manned aircraft, sensor imagery needs to be downloaded and processed upon landing. As a result, the imagery can be hours old and obsolete by the time it reaches fire-fighters. Through Ikhana’s high-bandwidth data link, fire-fighters received imagery in mere minutes. Speed of information is critical when high winds send fires spiraling off into different directions across tough terrain. In 2011, CBP deployed Predator B in support of fire-fighters during the largest wildfire in Arizona’s history where fires consumed more than half a million acres. Predator B provided streaming imagery of areas affected by the fires to the U.S. Geological Survey, Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Forest Service, and other agencies, allowing them to coordinate their resources better to combat the blazes and save lives. In 2013, the 163rd Wing of the California Air National Guard (ANG) supported fire-fighters in their efforts to contain California’s Rim Fire, marking another instance of using Predator-class RPA for fire-fighting in the U.S. The ANG launched an MQ-1 Predator to assist fire officials in combating wildfires which consumed over 250,000 acres in and around Yosemite National Park. Predator’s imagery identified the location of wildfire activity, the direction of the fires, along with verifying new fires created by lightning and blowing embers. Predator imagery was shared with Incident Commanders and other fire managers on the ground in real-time, providing them with valuable time and precise images to employ the most effective and efficient resources to extinguish the blazes and protect fire-fighters. Hurricane relief CBP deployed Predator B in 2008 to support disaster recovery efforts for Hurricane Gustav, representing the first time that the agency had deployed a RPA for disaster response. Launched from Corpus Christi, Texas, the aircraft patrolled over Louisiana and provided real-time video of damaged oil terminals, levees, roads, bridges, and homes. Identifying these post-event trouble spots provided real-time situational awareness to first responders, arming them with the latest information to determine best prioritisation of Government resources. Over 1,200 personnel from multiple federal agencies were stationed at FEMA’s joint field office to synchronise efforts with the response teams. These officials, in concert with federal officials

Politicians and manufacturers have protested that they are too costly Environmental rules that would have forced cities to use lead-free fittings for new fire hydrants will now be withdrawn in the US. Politicians and manufacturers have protested that they are unduly expensive. Legislation to reverse the regulations is pending in Congress, however the Environmental Protection Agency has said it will revise its guidance on lead in drinking water to exclude fire hydrants. The requirement was set to take effect at the beginning of 2014. “Fire hydrants are not widely used as a potable source of water,” the agency said in an e-mailed statement. “The guidance should be revised to exclude fire hydrants if Congress doesn’t take action.” The rule is the result of a law enacted in January 2011, the Reduction of Lead in Drinking Water Act. The measure changed the amount of the metal allowed in plumbing components that contact water supplies from 8% to a weighted average of 0.25%, according to the EPA. Cities and manufacturers don’t see hydrants posing a health risk, and believed they were exempt from the EPA rule until the agency’s Water Office on Oct. 22 issued a 14-page unsigned response to questions about the 2011 law and whether it applies to fire hydrants.

Tyco Fire Protection Products will be launching the FC501 panel at Intersec 2014 Tyco Fire Protection Products will be launching the FC501 panel, its newest FireClass addressable fire detection solution for the Middle East market at Intersec 2014. Designed for easy installation and use, the FC501 combines the simplicity of a conventional system with the benefits of FireClass addressable digital technology. This is a significant development in the detection market and the first time that addressable technology has been designed for small applications. The FireClass FC501 panel incorporates addressable digital technology at a price point for less complex and smaller scale applications, such as small factories and warehouses, schools and hotels. Saving installers valuable time and providing cost benefits, it is easily configurable and up and running in less than five minutes. The panel can programme up to 128 devices using the panel keyboard and devices can be easily addressed without the need for a handheld tool. The system can be tested and programmed simultaneously, whether it’s first time programming or modifying an existing component. The FC501 panel’s addressable fire detection technology also has benefits for end users, who are able to pinpoint an incident fast. Real time control from any location in the world means remote users can reset, control or silence the system using a graphic interface that displays all devices connected to the different zones. This provides effective remote management of detection systems and an enhanced capability over conventional panel technology. To demonstrate the ease of use and programming capabilities of the FC501 panel, Tyco will be holding an on stand competition at the show challenging attendees to program the panel as fast as possible. The competition will run daily between from 10.00am – 12.30pm and again from 2.00pm – 4.00pm each day with the winner receiving a special prize. Anyone wishing to participate should fill out a registration card on stand. Gary Craig, Sales Director Fire Detection, EMEA comments, “We are very pleased to be launching the FireClass FC501 panel at Intersec 2014. We first introduced the FireClass range to our Middle East customer base at Intersec 2013 and we’ve seen encouraging growth in the use of the technology over the last year. “The FireClass system provides installers and end users with highly superior and cost effective addressable system technology usually only available for larger scale project applications. At Tyco Fire Protection Products we are committed to innovation and this solution for small systems will enable more users to benefit from this fire detection technology.” Visit Tyco Security Products at Hall SA, stand 305-C during Intersec 2014 to find out more about the FireClass 501 system.

Spill in Arkansas occurred when an Exxon-owned pipeline ruptured ExxonMobil estimates that the March oil spill in an Arkansas subdivision has caused more than $70.5 million (£42.7 million) in damages for the company, according to documents recently filed with the federal Government. The figures were reported in an updated accident report submitted late last month to the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration. Exxon’s pipeline ruptured on March 29th, spilling thousands of barrels of oil in the Mayflower community about 30 miles northwest of Little Rock. Exxon spokesman Aaron Stryk said the damage total does not include the purchase of subdivision homes, which the company has offered to purchase based on appraisals from before the oil spill. “These are costs related to cleanup and remediation,” Stryk said. Property records show that Exxon had purchased 20 of the subdivision’s 62 houses as of December 9th. Three of the purchased houses, all within yards of the rupture site, have been demolished because of oil beneath their foundations. Stryk said the company “will maintain and market the properties it purchases in a manner that will be considerate of the value of the neighbouring properties and the rest of the subdivision.” He said the company had not placed any houses up for sale. According to the latest accident report, the cost of the emergency response to the oil spill was estimated at $58.8 million (£35.8 million), with environmental remediation costs put at $7.5 million (£4.6 million). The estimated cost of the pipeline company’s property damage and repair was placed at $1.2 million (£0.75 million), while the cost of the commodity — Canadian crude oil — lost was put at $300,000 (£180,000). The company estimated that “other costs” had reached $2.7 million, which included expenses for temporary housing and living expenses for spill-affected residents. The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration has recommended $2.6 million (£1.6 million) in civil penalties against Exxon, finding nine probable violations of pipeline safety regulations. Stryk said Exxon is still reviewing the notice of probable violations.